Thinking like demented you
by Be3
Summary: Ch1 - It wasn't Leonard McCoy whom the Guardian of Forever tried the worst. Nor was it James Kirk. Ch 2 - after escaping the Vians McCoy encoded a Private Opinion. To him, certain things in human history made it all too possible that the Enterprize had just committed an unforgivable crime, even though there really was no other choice.
1. Thinking like demented you

The woman was thin and bent with age and care, shivering in a heavy overcoat. Her left hand was held at an angle as if she was asking for something and her right foot jerked minutely every once in a while. For all that, she smiled and nodded at Jim's words, though Spock doubted she could tell, or cared, what they were.

Her name was Mabel. She was returning home from the market, having bought nothing.

Jim grinned and presented her an apple with a magician's flourish. She beamed and giggled.

The woman was dangerous.

Spock knew that from knowing his Captain's heart, so capable of empathy and pity. Sometimes it allowed him to leap ahead to truly Vulcanian conclusions which most humans shunned, fearing misery. If Jim made such a leap now...

But Mabel waved, limping slowly to a door, and Jim waved back and turned to him.

'Such a charming lady!'

'What will you have for lunch?'

'A bit of my own fat.'

'That,' said Spock severely, grasping at the safer topic, 'is not a healthy diet.'

'Okay, okay. I'll take one bite of yours. For the vitamins.'

'My fat is even less - '

'I meant your lunch.'

Sighing through his nose, Spock produced his own apple, weighed it, calculated its approximate nutritional value and measured up the bright-eyed human at his side. Jim was jumping up and down and rubbing his hands to keep warm. His hands... he had carried the woman's bag so that she could hide hers in her pockets.

The green light across the road now allowing their passage, Spock resumed walking.

'You will have the whole of it.'

'Will not.'

'Captain.'

'Exactly.'

'Very well!' he said in clipped tones, making Jim's eyes narrow in worry. 'Let us hurry; we are running late.'

And so they were. Perhaps they were already late, and McCoy had wrought the damage. It would be hard to detect, yet.

Stop, Spock chided himself silently. He really ought not to presume that McCoy wouldn't do something magnificently disastrous, especially as the man wasn't thinking clearly, so detecting could really be the easy part.

And he had no evidence to build predictions on, except - except the nature of the man and the nature of the age.

'Spock!'

Automatically, he turned his head to meet his friend's gaze and felt slight vertigo.

'You're awfully pink - what is it? Sit down! Have a sip.'

When the tepid water from Jim's flask touched his lips, Spock shook himself and sternly told his Captain to put his coat back on and let him rest a moment.

'You should go home!' the Captain said, clutching his sides and dancing in the cold.

'I am well enough to - .'

'The goal,' Jim countered heatedly, ''s not t' be able to work t'day and 'xpire t'morrow.'

'I agree,' said Spock, pushing himself up and bundling up the man in the too-thin garment. 'We are nearer to work than home, anyway.'

'Are y-you tr'ly 'll right?'

'Yes.'

'Race you.'

And Jim took off, and he took off after Jim. But even running, Spock thought.

The nature of McCoy was, without doubt, Humanity, bred by years of not standing by permitting suffering.

And the nature of the age...

He thought of the War that would come so soon - Mabel could live to see it - and the Wars that would come later, the ones human historians were still trying to comprehend back when Earth had entered the Federation of Planets.

He thought of other people like the woman, old at sixty and infirm, perhaps, from as early as fifty. Or was it forty? Hasn't there been a pandemic outbreak of a neuron-affecting virus about a decade before?*

Spock could re-invent a drug to help her, to help them all. McCoy's education, for all intents and purposes, was vastly inferior, but even so, the Doctor would be a godsend to the plagued population. AIDS. Breast cancer. Robotic prosthetics. He didn't have to know how to make everything from scratch - he just had to pass on everything he did know, there were enough skilled specialists to devise the rest, though it might take a while.

And Spock would have to stop McCoy from doing that.

For the sake of the Enterprise and innumerable other fates they had no right to alter.

For the sake of the Prime Directive, forever unknown to those who was most affected.

He dreaded to think what it would do to the Captain.

Though perhaps it would be something simple, resulting from reflex and not conscious thought; the Doctor was, after all, highly impulsive. Or it could even be a mistake. Like accidentally upsetting an apple-cart and helping a criminal escape and commit another murder. He would thank them for preventing that, and Jim's conscience would be significantly eased. The irony of it!

On the other hand, it could well be that they were to stay the Doctor's hand from a just and merciful action, in which case both he and Jim would rage against the duty of preserving Temporal Continuity.

But if Spock were to seek solace - which he didn't need, being a Vulcan - then he could at least count on neither human thinking about what they were leaving unchanged.

And he would not tell.

*encephalitis lethargica, of appr. 1916-1927, according to Oliver Sacks's 'Awakenings'.


	2. A personal matter

**Disclaimer**: I don't own anything here  
**Warning**: **a 'turn left' immediately after 'The Empath**'**, TOS. **

Cross-posted to trek-hc

When they were beamed up - three breathing men and two coffins - he found himself on a screened biobed, with M'Benga and Nurse Chapel standing at his side holding scanners and hypoes.  
The two jumped a bit, and Chapel whispered, 'Scotty's a miracle.'  
The scanners whirred. One by one, the hypoes were laid down unused. M'Benga's frown smoothed out, leaving his face more severe. He nodded and went out without a word.  
'I really am all right,' complained McCoy.  
Chapel smiled brittly and offered him a pill and a glass of water.  
'But I have to - '  
'Rest. Anne will sign the forms.'  
That was really under the belt. There was only one kind of forms to be signed that merited mentioning. He took the pill.

When he woke up, the Sickbay was fashionably empty. They had not wasted the time.  
The computer located Spock on the Bridge and Jim going there, so it had to be the beginning of a shift. He didn't wish to come up yet. He had reports to read.  
It didn't take long. The reports were condensed to one line each ('numerous internal injuries'). One line - did they think so little of him? He should have summoned Chapel to demand the full of it, but suddenly he was too tired.

He hadn't been friends with Linke or Ozaba. He hadn't even heard of either man before the briefing.  
But he did know how they had felt just before the end.  
And he did know -  
Nurse Berry came in with a tray, shaking her head at his sprightliness. He obeyed, answered, ate, promised, lied down and closed his eyes. And tried not to edge away from her approach.  
'Doctor?'  
'Mm.'  
'We are happy to have you back.'  
She left without once touching him, and he was grateful for that. He had to work - had to investigate - and all he had in the way of evidence was the leaden certainty that Vians were not that different from Humans.  
They were merely worse.  
And Leonard McCoy remembered Gem and wept, for he knew what Humans were capable of.

Why were those beasts certain that Gem's people could not yet have experienced pity? Gem had not been told what to do to ease the other captives' pain; she went and did it. If she truly hadn't felt the obligation before, how had she been taught - through torture?

_And she was mute.  
Had it always been so? Had she lost the capacity of speech by suffering unspeakable agonies?  
Had she lost it by seeing others suffer - and realising later that she could have saved them?  
Was she even truly mute, or were they simply been rendered unable to hear her?  
And why would a Vian teach the power of pity, of empathy and altruism? No, no, the question was - why would a Vian feel the need? The beings are, from the point of view of Federation, omnipowerful; they can heal any hurt... any physical hurt...  
But a case of Dorian Gray? Take a Vian, let him loose upon the world; and when the weakest seed of conscience takes root (and  
they could have doubts and second thoughts, or Jim wouldn't have been able to persuade them to let us go), let another erase his turmoil. Breed these others ('We can save her species'), and you can have an ideal army: highly intellectual and entirely heartless.  
Which was rather a grim prospect, what with these ionic storms coming and going when it suits the devils the most.  
And Starfleet can't challenge this kind of power, not yet, maybe never. Jim was aware of that. Was this why he did his best to present the case as a personal matter?_

A personal matter.  
What technology often fails to provide for people is comfort; so it is for Humans, anyway. Humans are social, they travel, collect things, get pets.  
Buy slaves.

Leonard McCoy asked the computer when did the so-and-so star go nova.

Then he slowly sat down at the table and drafted a Private Opinion, _not knowing_ it would shape the course of the beautiful _Enterprize_, the fate of a valiant woman and ultimately, the History of Mankind.


End file.
